Top Law Schools

A few years ago when I was still in law school I interviewed with Mckinsey over the Summer for a full-time role. Whatever associate it was that sent out the interview invite case consulting introduction sent a mass-email out to all the candidates who were also interviewing with Mckinsey that year for both summer associate gigs and fulltime gigs.

I benefited alot from TLS over the years so this is a part of my knowledge sharing back.

I figured it would be good to share the data/the numbers for a few reasons:
1. Reference to dissuade people who went to law school solely to work in a non-legal business function.
2. Data on people who had at least some interest in going into non-legal.
3. Data for people who want to go to consulting.
4. Probably one of the only examples of general data on people who had a semi-strong interest going into non legal functions after law school.

A few notes about this sample:
1. This could only be for one assigned set of interviewees, perhaps there were three more emails like this sent. That being said, the numbers add up for Harvard/Stanford for OCI slots so I think this may be decently comprehensive.
2. Please note that this data is for people who went only to law school. JD/MBA's were not recruited through this channel. I would assume a Kellogg or Ross JD/MBA went through B-school recruiting (and of the linkedin's I looked at none had MBAs)
3. Sample was for 2017/2018 grads
4. This does not include people who summered and received offers with Mckinsey in my year. I also believe that there was a second wave of recruitment after I was rejected at least for PHD candidates.
5. This step in the process was after a cognitive test sent by Mckinsey, there would have been a final round after this. Mckinsey flew people out for this round.

There were a total of 43 people on the email.

Schools that the interviewees came from (note one person I could not find):
HYS - 28 (67%)
Yale: 3
Stanford: 7
Harvard: 18
T6 36 (86%)
Chicago 4
Columbia 1
NYU 3
T14 41 (98%)
Berkeley 1
UPenn 1
Michigan 1
UVA 1
Georgetown 1
T20 42 (100%)
WUSTL 1

Careers/outcomes that these ended up in. Please note that for NYU, some Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and Stanford, the naming conventions were weird so it is unclear of the names of the persons. There were 15 of these people I couldn't find.

Current career:
Biglaw - 18
Biglaw -> Professor - 1
Banking Analyst -> Startup M&A - 1
Clerk 1
Consulting - 3 (all Mckinsey and all HLS)
Private Equity - 2 (Note one had prior PE experience)
Successful startup Founder - 1

High level comments:
1. It is important to go to a top school to even interview with Mckinsey, 86% of the people came from T6 or better
2. Don't go to law school solely to work in business. There are unicorn business outcomes out there but they are very difficult to get and even the "best and brightest" often end up still in biglaw.
3. Occasionally a "scrappy" candidate can make it to the inteview process evidenced by the 6 non HYS students
4. Only one person ended up in investment banking and they went at an analyst role - business roles often don't know what to do with JDs which is generally not a good thing.


I am happy to take questions on the dataset for the next week or so. Please note I won't share any information that will out any of the other people on this list (or myself).

[MODS PLEASE KEEP ME ANON]

This is great, and I'm on that same email chain! Currently in biglaw and generally enjoy what I do. I ultimately got to the final interview but was dinged at that point. I had some other interviews lined up within the MBB but ultimately decided not to pursue.

OP, are you currently working for McKinsey?

I don’t remember if I was in chain two years ago but I also interviewed for McKinsey.

For what it’s worth, my grades weren’t super. Think top 15% at T14 (not T6). I had very high GMAT and LSAT scores (760+ and 176+) and did well in first round but ultimately didn’t end up with McKinsey offer.

I interviewed a lot with second tier (big 4, Oliver Wyman) and was straight up told by a couple recruiters they didn’t want to hire me as associate because I had no business background (not even corporate finance class at the time, though I did do a few summers in undergrad as ibanking intern) and they didn't want to hire me as an analyst because they thought I was a flight risk. I did get one offer with one of the firms but as an analyst and the other recruiters were right I wasn’t willing to take 90k base. Part of the consideration was firm that offered me did most of its business in a rather niche area that I wasn’t too interested in. (Think defense/govt contracts/and some ops)

My counselor at career services told me consulting firms used to be more active but after getting burned a few times they stopped coming to my law school.

TLDR: while JD technically qualifies you for consulting/business roles as associate (at least if you ask recruiters), reality is the recruiting is extremely thin and you really shouldn’t go to JD thinking, like I did, that JD is versatile. Looking at numbers above though, I think HLS JD May be enough of an exception.

Anonymous User wrote:[MODS PLEASE KEEP ME ANON]

This is great, and I'm on that same email chain! Currently in biglaw and generally enjoy what I do. I ultimately got to the final interview but was dinged at that point. I had some other interviews lined up within the MBB but ultimately decided not to pursue.

OP, are you currently working for McKinsey?

I remember getting the email and being like really, I can’t believe that this got sent to everyone. CS did something similar with an investment banking recruiting workshop with a webex.

Unfortunately (perhaps fortunately) I did not get an offer with McKinsey or Bain who I also interviewed with. All I’ll say is that I am quite happy where my career landed and perhaps not getting the McKinsey offer may have been beneficial for me in the long run.

Anonymous User wrote:I don’t remember if I was in chain two years ago but I also interviewed for McKinsey.

For what it’s worth, my grades weren’t super. Think top 15% at T14 (not T6). I had very high GMAT and LSAT scores (760+ and 176+) and did well in first round but ultimately didn’t end up with McKinsey offer.

I interviewed a lot with second tier (big 4, Oliver Wyman) and was straight up told by a couple recruiters they didn’t want to hire me as associate because I had no business background (not even corporate finance class at the time, though I did do a few summers in undergrad as ibanking intern) and they didn't want to hire me as an analyst because they thought I was a flight risk. I did get one offer with one of the firms but as an analyst and the other recruiters were right I wasn’t willing to take 90k base. Part of the consideration was firm that offered me did most of its business in a rather niche area that I wasn’t too interested in. (Think defense/govt contracts/and some ops)

My counselor at career services told me consulting firms used to be more active but after getting burned a few times they stopped coming to my law school.

TLDR: while JD technically qualifies you for consulting/business roles as associate (at least if you ask recruiters), reality is the recruiting is extremely thin and you really shouldn’t go to JD thinking, like I did, that JD is versatile. Looking at numbers above though, I think HLS JD May be enough of an exception.

OP here. I 100% agree with the above and this was the intention of my post that law school isn’t all that versatile. If you can go to say HLS you are probably better off just getting a decent corporate job.

I also tried for tier 2 consulting and they only would look at me for analyst roles. Accenture was open to post MBA but in an implementation role which i treated as worse than biglaw.

A couple of respected investment banking boutiques (like Stephens/Sagent) were also willing to interview but only at the investment banking analyst level.

I had better luck with ibanks. Serious consideration for associate and I had two offers. Both about 100 some with prospect for bonuses nearly doubling all in pay. I had ibanking internships in college though.

Bump

Looking at numbers above though, I think HLS JD May be enough of an exception.

I think those who can make it into HYS wouldn't have a problem getting a decent job without a JD.

On a somewhat unrelated note, what do people think about legal positions at consulting firms like MBB? Any comments on pay / work-life / exits? Compared to tech in-house? Specifically AGC at M.

Are you involved in bankruptcy consulting?